Lost in Translation: FASD's Strategic Drift
Reminder: Independent parent group — not affiliated with or endorsed by FASD.
Breaking news [March 4] just dropped on the facility search
TL;DR
FASD's strategic plan expired in 2025. One working session was held in October 2025. A promised follow-up has not been scheduled. Strategic planning has not appeared on a Board agenda since — including the January and February 2026 meetings.
The school's mission and vision have been quietly rewritten. The 2025–26 handbook contains entirely new mission, vision, and core values language — different from what's published on FASD's own website, Colorado Gives page, our DPS Charter Agreement, and previous handbook. No Board vote or public discussion preceded these changes.
Several defining features of FASD are being changed or put at risk: the longer school day has been shortened, three daily recesses are uncertain under the shorter day, small kindergarten class sizes were abandoned, and the Jules Verne visiting teacher model is being supplemented with alternative hiring approaches.
These changes are happening without a strategic framework. In upcoming posts, we'll explore what a strategic planning process could look like for FASD — and how parents can help shape the school's direction.
Parent Recap (What Happened)
1. The strategic plan has expired with no replacement in sight
FASD's strategic plan covered the period through 2025. It established the school's mission, vision, and four strategic pillars: Academic Excellence, Community Engagement, Operational Excellence, and Financial Sustainability.
October 2025: The Board held a strategic planning session. The official minutes describe a session focused on reviewing existing plan metrics and creating an evaluation framework for the Interim Executive Director. The minutes also reference a planned "Board retreat to identify high-level strategic priorities for 2025–26" and an "October Board meeting: begin presenting next steps."
Neither has materialized. As of the February 2026 Board meeting — four months later — no second session has appeared on the Board calendar, and no communication has been shared about timing.
January and February 2026 Board meetings: no strategic planning discussed. The January meeting was notably thin — two scheduled presenters didn't attend and the Board adjourned early. The February meeting was packed with committee reports, enrollment updates, hiring, PTO governance, and the executive director search. Neither meeting included any discussion of strategic direction, the expired plan, or what comes next. The Board chair remains on leave of absence, and strategic planning work has not been visibly reassigned.
2. The mission and vision statements have changed
The school currently publishes different mission and vision statements depending on where you look. This isn’t a copy edit. These statements shift the school’s definition of ‘excellence’ and what success looks like
Mission — as published on FASD's website and Colorado Gives page (and our DPS Charter Agreement):
"To develop bilingual, bi-literate learners through a French language-immersion curriculum meeting the highest educational standards of the United States and France and delivered in a highly diverse learning environment that promotes critical thinking, creativity and empathy."
Mission — as published in the 2025–26 Parent/Student Handbook:
"The French American School of Denver fosters a joyful, inclusive, and bilingual learning community where students are empowered to grow intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Through a rigorous, standards-based curriculum delivered in French and English, we prepare diverse learners to thrive as curious, compassionate, and globally minded citizens."
Vision — as published on FASD's website and Colorado Gives page (and our DPS Charter Agreement):
"To be a premier bilingual educational institution that prepares students for success in local and international high schools and universities; inspires them to pursue personal and professional opportunities around the world; and encourages them to be lifelong learners and community leaders who can connect with others in one of the world's most widely-spoken and influential languages."
Vision — as published in the 2025–26 handbook:
"To become a model of inclusive, dual-language public education — where every student feels seen, every voice is valued, and every learner is prepared to lead with empathy, excellence, and purpose in an interconnected world."
The handbook also introduces six entirely new core values and a "Key Programmatic Characteristics" section that appear nowhere else — not in the strategic plan, not on the website, and not in the prior year's handbook. Board meeting agendas from the current school year do not reflect a vote or discussion to adopt new mission, vision, or core values language.
So what: The school's foundational identity statements have been rewritten and are now published inconsistently — the handbook version matches neither the website, the Colorado Gives page, nor the mission language in FASD's charter agreement with DPS.
3. Defining features are being changed or put at risk
Shorter school day. FASD's day is being reduced from 8:00–3:30 (7.5 hours) to 8:15–3:15 (7 hours). In the community survey, the current schedule received the most first-choice votes (60 of 149 respondents, ~40%). Multiple families cited the longer day and absence of early release days as factors in choosing FASD. (See companion posts on the bell schedule survey results and parent survey dashboard.)
Small kindergarten class sizes abandoned. In summer 2025, the Board approved increasing kindergarten class sizes to accommodate enrollment growth — one of the few motions not unanimously approved. No public analysis of the impact on teacher workload or student experience was provided.
Three daily recesses at risk. With the school day shortened by 30 minutes, something must give. The bell schedule proposal says "we do not plan to reduce current lunch and recess schedules," but no master schedule has been shared showing where the 30 minutes comes from.
Jules Verne visiting teacher model being supplemented. At both the January and February 2026 Board meetings, the Interim Executive Director described a hiring approach that leads with local recruitment, with Jules Verne filling remaining positions. In January: "any additional positions once we hire outside of that program, then we'll go to Jules Verne to hire probably some additional visiting teachers." The February meeting revealed the school is also pursuing J-1 cultural exchange visas outside Jules Verne — which can extend up to five years versus the two-year maximum under FASD's current MOU with the Grenoble Académie. The Grenoble Académie is the regional office of France’s national education ministry that oversees public education and teacher administration in its region. (Worth noting: this two-year limit is a constraint of the Grenoble relationship specifically, not the Jules Verne program itself, which allows up to three years. Expanding relationships with additional Académies could diversify the pipeline while preserving the cultural exchange model.) Board discussion during the February meeting surfaced confusion among members about how these different pathways actually work.
So what: Each of these changes may have a reasonable operational justification on its own. But together, they all move in the same direction — toward a more conventional school model and away from the attributes that made FASD distinctive. Without a strategic plan that says "this is who we want to be," there's no framework for evaluating whether that's the right direction.
The “Since You’re Here…” Section
Unofficial reflections — offered in good faith (and with a grain of salt)
I want to be explicit: the section above is my attempt to keep things factual and balanced. This section is my personal perspective.
1) A strategic plan isn't a "nice to have" — it's the North Star
I've seen this pattern in consulting work: organizations that treat strategic planning as a box-checking exercise rather than a living governance tool. When the plan expires and nothing replaces it, you don't get "status quo." You get drift. Every tactical decision made without strategic context compounds. Over time, you look up and realize the organization has become something nobody explicitly chose.
That appears to be what's happening at FASD. Strategic decisions — schedule, class sizes, hiring approach, institutional positioning — are being made and approved without a framework for evaluating whether they move the school toward or away from its stated goals. The Board's most important responsibility is to set and maintain strategic direction. When that doesn't happen, direction gets set by default — one tactical decision at a time.
We plan to explore what a strategic planning process could look like for FASD in future posts — including the questions it should answer and how parents can be part of the conversation.
2) The mission and vision changes deserve an explanation
The original mission explicitly references "the highest educational standards of the United States and France" and positions FASD as developing "bilingual, bi-literate learners." The new handbook language shifts toward "joyful, inclusive" community-building and "globally minded citizens." The original vision aspires to be a "premier bilingual educational institution." The new version aspires to be "a model of inclusive, dual-language public education."
These aren't minor wording updates. They suggest different institutional identities and different priorities. Maybe the new language is better — maybe it reflects where the school needs to go. But foundational statements don't change themselves. Someone rewrote them. The question is whether that happened through a deliberate governance process with community input, or whether it just... happened. Based on the public record, it appears to be the latter.
3) Stack the changes up and ask: does this look like "academic excellence"?
The previous strategic plan had Academic Excellence as its first pillar. A shorter school day means less instructional time for a demanding dual-language curriculum. Larger kindergarten classes mean less individualized attention during the foundation-building year. Uncertain recess protections undermine a research-backed developmental approach. A shift in the teacher hiring model changes the character of the French cultural experience.
I'm not saying each decision is wrong in isolation. But when you line them up, the pattern is clear — and it doesn't point toward the school's stated first priority.
4) Are we thinking about what happens when the reasons families chose FASD disappear?
Families come to FASD for lots of reasons — French education, academic rigor, small-school feel, the City Park location, the longer day without early release. The school has grown because it offers a differentiated value proposition that appeals across these motivations.
Value propositions sometimes need to evolve. But evolution requires understanding what you're trading away and what you're gaining. When families say in survey after survey that specific attributes drove their enrollment decision, and those attributes are removed without analysis of retention risk or competitive positioning, that's not evolution. That's drift.
What happens to enrollment when families who chose FASD for its distinctiveness realize they could get a similar experience closer to home? What's the value proposition when the attributes that justified the commute no longer exist? A strategic planning process would answer these questions. Right now, nobody appears to be asking them.
5) This is fixable — and it starts with three questions
Three questions the Board can answer at a single meeting:
What is the timeline and owner for completing the strategic planning process?
Were the handbook's mission, vision, and core values changes approved by the Board — and where is that recorded?
What guardrails protect FASD's key differentiators (instructional time, recess, K class sizes, teacher pipeline)?
Families have a right to expect that strategic direction will be set rather than left to accumulate by default — and that major changes will be evaluated against the school's mission before they're approved, not after.
~ Greg
Want to learn more?
Questions about school’s strategic plan? The Board can be reached at board@fasdenver.org.
The publicly available strategic planning documents are:
